


Yours

by withered



Series: Who's been lovin' you good? [27]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky has feelings, Bucky is squishy, Bucky wants to belong, Bucky's prosthetic, Bucky's the real Man out of Time, Everything about this is pretty squishy, M/M, Tony is squishy, Vaguely Italian Tony, Vaguely Russian Bucky, i don't know anything anymore, is this pre-slash? i can't even tell, terms of endearment, the heart monitor keeps trying to expose bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 10:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16532750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withered/pseuds/withered
Summary: Bucky’s never put much thought into belonging.At least not at first.





	Yours

 

 

Bucky’s never put much thought into belonging.

At least not at first.

Ever since his defrosting, and the realization that he was not _Steve’s Bucky_ , it was made abundantly clear that _this Bucky_ would not belong anywhere.

After over a century with Hydra, he was more Russian than American, and though he’d trained as a sniper in the war, Bucky had more of a reputation as a human tank than a marksman. Bucky’s memories too were few and far between, and even then, those seemed to center more around his missions as the Asset than the nostalgia of Brooklyn in the forties.

He’d heard that people referred to Steve as the Man out of Time, but Bucky was the one that had sprung forth – seemingly fully formed – into a living weapon with no identity of his own and no tether to anchor him to any particular era.

Bucky had been awake during Hitler, Kennedy and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and had walked in the streets of Europe and the Americas before being spirited away into cryofreeze once more.

Bucky couldn’t even claim to belong to SHIELD, or the United States government. Of the few things Bucky _could_ have a say in, he’d been adamant that those were not something he wanted to be part of.

With Steve too distraught to accept that the Bucky he’d gotten back wasn’t _his Bucky_ , _this Bucky_ was left adrift with no human ties of his own in a new millennium under a new order.

Bucky didn’t belong to any place, person or organization, and he’d been alright with it.

Until he wasn’t.

The comforting beeps of the heart monitor he was hooked up to ramps up as Tony swans into the room.

Not for the first time since their reacquaintance almost six months ago, Bucky thinks that there’s something severely wrong with the man.

That he personally helped the Rogues return to the United States after their exile and then offered them a place in the New Avengers Compound, was baffling enough. But that the man was not only willing to just forgive and forget the things _Bucky_ had done, was going too far.

The Rogues barely deserved the second chance Tony had given them, eminent alien invasion notwithstanding, but _Bucky?_

“Boo Bun, if you frown any harder you’ll give yourself a migraine.” Over his sunglasses, Tony raises a brow in amusement.

Bucky can’t resist the urge to growl. “Stark, for god’s sake, _you can’t_.”

For the first time, Tony pauses and looks to be considering him before he trails, “Is it because you don’t want me to, or…?”

Bucky has seen countless people beg for their lives and wasn’t moved.

Hell, he’d had a cat as a roommate while in Bucharest that he’d successfully resisted petting despite the creature’s insistent meows and unflinching desire to make itself at home on Bucky’s person, and neither of those causes him to flounder in search of a supplication faster.

“ _Tony_ – you just – you can’t be serious about doing this.”

“Am I really the type to do things lightly?”

“Tony, I’m not – I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

He furrows his brows, swallows hard and looks anywhere but at him. “You know why.”

“James,” Tony soothes, and the fact that he’s using Bucky’s actual name and not the nickname he’d found himself with, makes his mouth go dry. “I don’t want you to use the Hydra arm anymore.”

It’s his turn to ask, “Why?”

Tony sighs. “You really think you were being slick, throwing yourself into the worst of it, using yourself as a human shield; coming back from missions practically in a body bag?”

Bucky huffs. “Nothing’s changed,” he insists.

“Au contraire,” Tony rebuts with a wiggle of his brows. His casual teasing is how Tony had gotten under Bucky’s skin in the first place, and he curses his weakness to it. “When you first got here, you’d throw yourself on a grenade for the sake of it. Now, you’re doing it because someone else could get hurt. Hell, you got your arm blown off _again_ because you were protecting me. Which, seriously, Tin Can, I don’t need that kind of symmetry in my life, alright?”

Bucky can’t even snort a reply, only open his mouth wordlessly before Tony forges on, turning the puppy eyes up to eleven.  “At the very least, take the arm I designed so it doesn’t happen again.”

“But if you can’t blow it off -” He cuts himself off, glaring at nothing.

“Hey, give me some credit. I actually did listen when you were babbling on about a having a freaking _kill-switch_ on the arm,” Tony says, half annoyed, half soothing. “You and Rhodey, honestly,” he mutters to himself. “In any case, I know that it isn’t fair of me to just spring this on you – I just – I don’t want to worry about you out there, getting the arm blown off is hardly pain free and you’ll be at a disadvantage in enemy territory and I can’t have that.”

“Feeling protective, kotenok?”

“Absolutely,” Tony declares, unabashed and with no sense of thought to how much it was causing Bucky’s heart to speed up despite the heart monitor’s incessant beeps. “What, you think Rhodey _asked_ for titanium reinforcement on the spinal column of his suit?” Not waiting for a reply, he demands, “Now, take a look at the finishing touches on the arm, would you? Gotta make sure it passes muster.”

The Starkpad Bucky had been glaring at before Tony’s arrival with his pending mission report on the screen was replaced with the blueprints of the arm he’d become intimately familiar with in the past two months.

At first, it had been something of a fantasy – being rid of the Hydra arm, the last visages of his life under their thumb – and had quickly evolved into something of a goal. After all, that arm would be 100% StarkTech, and Bucky – Bucky wanted to _deserve it_.

If Tony thought he _did_ then…he exhales shakily.

The overall design was Tony’s signature, though the convergence of the plates on the outer bicep to outline a smaller version of the arc reactor to match the one on Tony’s chest a conscious move on Bucky’s part, his own pledge of allegiance that Tony, as of yet, hasn’t noticed enough to mean anything and mention. Everything is to the agreed-upon specifications, and as he rotates the design, he spots something on the shoulder mooring that would run just long enough to hug beneath his collarbone on attachment, the word _STARK,_ engraved into the material _._

Bucky can practically feel the indentation and suppresses the sudden urge to run his fingers over where he’d be claimed as one of _Tony’s,_ the same way Rhodes has, and Bruce, and Peter, and Pepper, and the bots.

At that moment, Tony steps closer, lips curling in a smile as his free hand bumps tentatively against Bucky’s on the bed. “That…okay?”

His heartrate catches and holds. “Da…”

Tony’s smile is bright and hilariously relieved as if that hadn’t been something Bucky’s wanted the entire time.

Though, Bucky can’t help the flush of embarrassment as Tony tugs the chair closest to Bucky’s hospital bed closer, which makes Tony wiggle his brows. “C’mon, _tesoro_ , like you’re surprised, I promised to hold your hand, didn’t I?”

With a flash of teeth and a dig of a dimple, he observes, looking at the heart monitor with no small amount of concern, “Besides, you seem nervous.”

 “I…I’m just,” Bucky struggles, cheeks stained red, “I just…”

“Hey,” Tony met his gaze again, eyes wide and earnest as Bucky allowed their fingers to tangle because _he was weak, dear god, he did not deserve this –_ “I’ll be right here the whole time, don’t you worry about it.”

“You have things to do,” Bucky blurts, even as his digits tighten around Tony’s. “You can’t just sit here for the entire six hours -”

“Amore,” he scoffs, “That’s what you’re worried about? I’ve cleared my schedule for this. No takebacks. Pepper’s glad to have the excuse to take all my meetings herself and Brucie’s got something cooking in the lab that I _do not_ like the smell of. This is perfect.”

“Sitting in on my surgery cannot be your idea of a good time,” Bucky deadpans.

With a wiggle of his brows, Tony “uh-huh”-s before reaching out to boop him – _actually boop him_ – on the nose and say, “I _want_ to be here, and nothing you say can chase me away, _Scontoroso,_ so don’t even try.”

While Bucky tried his best not to be moved by being called “Grumpy”, trying to be unaffected by Tony’s wide smile was practically impossible especially when it was focused solely on Bucky like he was the only thing in the room that mattered, the only one who could make Tony smile like that –

The machine beeps in warning.

Oh, good god.

Bucky huffs quietly, feigning his annoyance. “Fine…just…if you get bored or anything, kotenok, it’s not like I’ll know if you let go -”

 “Nope,” Tony declares, cradling Bucky’s hand with both of his. “Mine now.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> One day I'll write what I intend to. That day was not today.  
> [Click here if you want to find out more about my work](https://everything-withered.tumblr.com/)


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